Google Panda and SEO Blues

I'm sure many of you are aware that Google recently changed its algorithm, naming it "Panda." The change was designed to improve search engine results and get rid of "content farms." Ezinearticles, for example, was affected. My friend over at SEO Hacker has already written some good articles on it, but I'll chime in just a little.

It seems my fitness blog was hit pretty hard--seems like my traffic from google has decreased. A lot of different variables have to be considered, so I'm not 100% sure.

The problem is I'm not sure exactly why. Do I re-post content (with permission)? Yes. But all along google has been officially saying there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty--thanks for changing the rules, guys (if that's indeed what they have done--it isn't clear to me).

Most of the content on my blog is original, so I'm not sure if I'm getting busted for having some re-posted articles.

*I'm not going to panic. I think they will tweak this algorithm as time goes on. Sites like Squidoo, for example, were busted before. They actually approached google and were able to rank better after cleaning up their act. I'm not even 100% sure if I've been affected in the first place.

*I'm not going to take down any re-posted articles. Why? Because anything that I have posted has been carefully selected to be useful to my readers. If that causes me to get penalized, so be it--I can't base my whole blog on google algorithms.

*I will probably not re-post articles as much in the future. That may sound contradictory after the previous point. But my whole philosophy about SEO has been to work with google without obsessing over it. I'm not willing to go back and scramble my whole blog, but I'm willing to adjust the future content. Is this a good compromise? I have no idea.

*I'll also keep using other viable (more reliable) methods of getting traffic, like using forums and Adgitize.